12/31/2009

The time has come to document another year’s worth of bias, omissions, and distortions at the L.A. Times — all gathered together in one handy post. As always, there’s something about seeing all this stuff in one place that really opens your eyes.

This year, L.A. Times editors whitewashed (and botched basic facts about) the ACORN scandal; protected their hero Barack Obama; sneered at tea parties; openly pushed health care reform; gave space to someone lauding killer Ted Kennedy’s “moral largeness”; hid evidence of the Fort Hood shooter’s Muslim ties and then flushed the evidence; made up a quote from John Cornyn and then flushed the evidence; hid conflicts of interest from multiple op-ed contributors; plagiarized Wikipedia; eliminated its local news section; had four rounds of layoffs; suffered from plummeting circulation; and committed numerous high-profile editing errors.

To name just some of their problems.

Oh: and they wrote numerous detailed corrections in response to my complaints. As they do every year.

Liberal bias? Check. Rank incompetence? Check.

Without further ado, here is my seventh annual review of the Los Angeles Times, otherwise known as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer.

WHITEWASHING THE ACORN SCANDAL

Above: James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles

In September, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles released eye-opening undercover videos showing ACORN workers at numerous offices helping the couple with a purported prostitution ring. This newspaper whitewashed the ACORN scandal right from the beginning, portraying it as a “conservative” complaint, utterly failing to mention the fact that Giles and O’Keefe told ACORN employees that they were pimping out young girls aged 13-15 smuggled in from El Salvador.

Then Peter Dreier wrote a fact-challenged op-ed claiming that Giles and O’Keefe had received assistance at only two ACORN offices. (The documented number was at least five at the time the op-ed appeared.) Dreier also incorrectly claimed that “not a single person who signed a phony name on a registration form ever actually voted” — although one person who did was later convicted only of false registration and not voter fraud.

[UPDATE: I don’t consider Goldberg to be part of any deliberate “whitewash.” I think he gave op-ed space to someone who is either dishonest or plain stupid — and then lacked the single pair of conservative editorial eyes necessary to catch the blatant misstatements in Dreier’s piece.]

But the funniest material came from hapless L.A. Times columnist James Rainey.

In September, Rainey wrote a column in which he uncritically quoted ACORN worker Lavelle Stewart suggesting that she had turned Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe out of her office. Rainey hadn’t bothered to contact Breitbart — or Giles or O’Keefe — to ask their side of the story. I predicted that Rainey would end up with egg on his face. When Breitbart started hinting that he had damning video, my prediction started looking better and better. And sure enough, the very person Rainey had uncritically quoted turned out to be the star of Giles and O’Keefe’s latest ACORN video:

As if all this wasn’t enough, the paper let stand another fabricated quote from O’Keefe, which was originally reported by the Washington Post, and reprinted by the L.A. Times. The Post corrected the error back in September. The Times still hasn’t.

SYCOPHANTIC COVERAGE OF OUR HERO BARACK OBAMA

The paper uncritically reported that opposition to Obama’s health care plan was fueled by angry mobs of right-wing extremists. Typical of editors’ attitude was this strawman from a front-page “news analysis” which claimed Obama “has seen the healthcare debate sidetracked by false warnings that government ‘death panels’ would be employed to snuff out Grandma.” Naturally, genuine concerns about rationing of health care were not discussed in this polemic.

The paper gave op-ed space to someone who implied that government can cover our health care — and it won’t cost us a dime! Because government money appears magically, out of nowhere!

When Obama held a town hall meeting on health care, he declared: “I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter.” This was an easily provable lie, and editors failed to tell readers about it.

The paper dutifully ran a picture of doctors in white coats — an image designed to lend credibility to Obama’s health care plan — and didn’t tell readers that the White House had passed out the coats beforehand to any doctor not already wearing one.

Editors forgot to mention Obama’s little costume trick

When a controversy arose about Truther and Obama appointee Van Jones, the paper dismissed it as “a firestorm that raged almost entirely on conservative talk shows and websites.” Well, sure: the print version of the paper did indeed ignore the controversy until Jones resigned — an indication that it was indeed a legitimate story that the paper had simply refused to cover. The same pattern held with NEA communications director Yosi Sergant: editors hid the controversy from their print readers right up until he resigned.

When Obama violated his pledge to make bills available for review for five days, editors overlooked it. But hey, the bill wasn’t that important — it was just a stimulus bill costing almost a trillion dollars. The paper groused that Republicans had failed to participate in the drafting of the bill to give it a bipartisan sheen — all because Republicans failed to treat things like an increased government role in health care as the “consensus item” that the editors falsely claimed it was.

The paper used loaded language such as saying Republicans would “snipe” at Obama as he swam “against the partisan tide” — as layoffs “add[ed] urgency to the need to agree on a stimulus plan.”

Stimulus plan good . . . tea parties bad. And inconsequential. When KFI’s John and Ken hosted a taxpayer revolt that drew 8000-15,000 people, the paper refused to cover it, for transparently phony reasons. Editor David Lauter responded to hundreds of angry readers in one e-mail — and failed to use a “bcc” line, meaning he shared each angry reader’s e-mail address with all the others. If you’re thinking: “What a moron!” then you have plenty of company.

When they did cover tea parties, they portrayed them as a uniquely Republican phenomenon that carried risks for Republicans — ignoring the fact that tea-party attendees are also largely fed up with the Republican party.

When Major Nidal Malik Hasan perpetrated a terrorist act of mass murder at Fort Hood, the L.A. Times‘s initial story had no mention of the shooter’s religion, his alleged rants against U.S. involvement in Iraq, his alleged approval of suicide bombings, or the allegations that he was shouting something in Arabic as he shot. But the paper did make sure to include irrelevant statistics concerning suicides at Army bases due to deployments to the war. After Instapundit linked my post and the story became an obvious embarrassment to the paper, editors did what they generally do with embarrassing stories: they flushed it down the memory hole.

In 2005, the editors sanctimoniously announced that there was no reason to segregate state prisoners by race. I like to remind them of this every time there is a major race riot at a prison, and this year was no exception.

Just as the paper slammed Kozinski, it protected liberal federal judge Stephen Reinhardt, deciding not to tell readers when the Supreme Court declared that Reinhardt had dissembled in a death penalty appeal.

Editors have this habit of soliciting comments from my guest poster Jack Dunphy and then refusing to publish them because he uses a pseudonym. They did it again this year, and I think it’s pretty rude.

In a typically fatuous column about the state budget, our friend Nofanofcablecos became Nofanofaccuratestatistics — claiming that the California population had increased by 30% over 10 years. He only overstated it by 100%. Close enough for L.A. Times work? Surprisingly, no. I complained, and the paper issued a correction. The correction was incorrect and misleading — i.e. par for the course.

Jack Dunphy recalled Tim Rutten’s complaint that officer concern over release of private information was “preposterous.” It seemed less preposterous after it actually happened. He’s such a shill, he even uncritically accepted the Obama administration’s “created or saved” nonsense.

In a single day, the paper managed to confuse LAPD officers and LAPD Explorers (members of a youth program); confuse the concept of a “radius” with that of a circle’s area; and misstate the weight of water by over 50%. They soon corrected the error about Explorers and officers.

The paper told readers that Obama had “dawned” a pair of jeans (later identified as “mom jeans”) to incompetently toss out the first pitch at a baseball game.

UPDATE: Thanks to John Hinderaker at Power Line for the link and the kind words.

UPDATE x2 1-1-10: The paper today corrected the fabricated O’Keefe quote that had been published in the Washington Post. They have yet to correct the fabricated O’Keefe quote appearing in James Rainey’s column. Details here.

New Year’s wishes go to our Eastern Time Zone and foreign friends, but it won’t be long until everyone will be celebrating in 2010. And check back soon for Patterico’s 2009 LA Dog Trainer Year-in-Review.

The United States has filed a federal criminal complaint against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charging him with attempting to destroy a Northwest Airlines plane by detonating a high-explosive device. Abdulmutallab has undoubtedly been advised of his Miranda rights and at his initial court hearing, Abdulmutallab told the court he didn’t have funds for an attorney. The judge said the court would assign him one.

“Questions need to be answered. Where was Abdulmutallab trained? Who trained him? Where is the training facility located? Where is the stash of PETN, the explosive used in the bomb? What are the techniques he was told to use for getting through airport security? Was there a well-dressed man who helped him board the plane without a passport as claimed by another passenger? And, most important, are future attacks planned?

Yes, we could try him first and then interrogate him. But by then the information is stale, especially if he utilizes the same legal challenges Moussaoui did to drag out the process for years.”

But we can’t question Abdulmutallab because, as a criminal defendant, he has the right to remain silent. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have chosen this course but this Rasmussen poll demonstrates they are in the minority:

“Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22% say it should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act, as is currently the case.”

What’s more, 58% of Americans would use waterboarding and other aggressive techniques to gain information from Abdulmutallab. In other words, for the moment, more Americans agree with Dick Cheney than Barack Obama.

A quote from an unnamed Obama official as the Administration strives to show how engaged Obama is in dealing with the the Christmas Day terrorist attack on Northwest Flight 253, including how “Obama is balancing his leisure activities with appropriate attention to his job”:

“[Obama is] continuing to learn new things … and is continuing to ask a lot of probing questions,” the official said.

A commenter we know replies:

“I always love it when his own admin people have to puff him up by saying things like he’s asking “probing” questions.”

Posted by: MayBee | Dec 31, 2009 7:20:26 PM

Note to MayBee: I’m really not following you. I read the article, noticed the good comment, and lo and behold it was you.

“Tiger Woods has entered rehab—possibly for sex addiction—at a cushy Arizona facility, pushed by an entourage desperate for him to start repairing his badly damaged image. “He has been there for a few days since his handlers forced him to enter the program,” a source tells X17online. “They feel that if he blames his cheating on addiction, the public will forgive him.”

The source also says Tiger wants to correct the problems that led to his infidelity and the decline in his standing with the public. However, for now, Wood’s freefall continues as AT&T dropped its sponsorship today.

“Justice Department prosecutors improperly built their case on sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity. Urbina said the government’s explanations were “contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.”

Apparently the court found the government compelled the guards to provide evidence against themselves in the equivalent of a Garrity interview. In Garrity v New Jersey, the United States Supreme Court “held that when a police officer is coerced, under threat of discipline, to give a statement, the officer is immunized against the use of the statement in a subsequent criminal prosecution.” The Blackwater case involved a similar situation:

“After the shooting, the State Department ordered the guards to explain what happened.

Investigators promised the men that their statements were to be used only for the internal inquiry and would not be introduced in a criminal case. Such limited immunity deals are common in police departments so officers involved in shootings cannot hold up internal investigations by refusing to cooperate.

The deal meant that prosecutors had to build their case without using those statements. Urbina said the Justice Department failed to do so. Prosecutors read those statements, reviewed them in the investigation and used them to get search warrants, Urbina said.”

Judge Urbina did not reach the issue of whether the shooting was proper.

This incident was very controversial in Baghdad and the Iraqi government pressed to have charges filed in Iraq instead of the United States. This dismissal will likely result in a backlash from Iraqis.

“The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case, which became a source of contention between the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Many Iraqis also held up the judge’s decision as proof of what they’d long believed: U.S. security contractors were above the law.”

Seven CIA officers and the CIA base chief at a pivotal forward operating base were killed Wednesday by a suicide bomber wearing an Afghan National Army uniform, and six more CIA officers were injured. The bomber’s ability to infiltrate the secure base is worrisome:

“The use of an army uniform raised the possibility that the uniform was stolen or that the Afghan National Army ranks had been infiltrated by insurgents, a potentially more serious and pervasive problem.

The attack happened close to dusk, when some people on the base were finishing their daily work and relaxing or taking a break before dinner or before returning to their offices for the evening.

A NATO official said the bomber managed to elude security and reach an area near the base’s gym. Among other questions raised was whether the bomber worked at the base and had clearance, or if a security slip allowed him to gain entry.”

The deaths reportedly doubledtripled the number of CIA officers killed since 9/11:

“The attack dealt a significant blow to the often insular, tight-knit intelligence organization, which has lost only 90 officers in the line of duty since its founding in 1947.

Previously, the spy agency has revealed that four of its officers have been killed since the Sept. 11 attacks, all of them memorialized with stars carved into a marble wall at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va.”

My condolences to the families of these heroes.

— DRJ

UPDATE: The AP reports the suicide bomber had been invited onto the base as a potential informant. Sources report that either he was not searched or he set off the bomb as he was about to be searched.

President Obama has ordered a review of the Terrorist Watchlist program following the Northwest Flight 253 terror attack. Last Sunday he named John Brennan, a CIA veteran who helped establish the National Counterterrorism Center, to head the review. Today Brennan received an ethics waiver so he can begin the inquiry.

Brennan may have a lot of work ahead of him. A May 2009 Justice Department audit found problems in the Watchlist program that affect national security:

“The FBI has been slow to update the national terror suspect watchlist — and the lapses pose real risks to U.S. security, a Justice Department audit has found.

A report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General, Glenn Fine, found that 12 terror suspects who were either not watchlisted or were slow to be added to the list may have traveled into or out of the United States during the period when they were not placed on the list.”

Representatives from Homeland Security and the FBI gave assurances that corrections would be made. In hindsight, their assurances are not reassuring:

“Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the issues have been addressed and her agency is publicly committed to working with the Justice Department “as a shared mission of protecting this country is paramount,” said Sara Kuban, a spokeswoman for Napolitano.

In two of every three cases the auditors examined, the FBI failed to update information in the watchlist, as required.

FBI Assistant Director John Miller said the bureau has already taken steps to improve the system.”

12/30/2009

“Samantha Broadhead and Jack Ault have been charged with attempted murder and arson after the fire Tuesday in Clearwater — about 20 miles west of Tampa on Florida’s Gulf Coast — MyFoxTampa.com reported.

Clearwater Police Department detectives say the young couple poured gasoline on Nancy Broadhead’s bedroom floor and bed, and then set the room aflame. Police say the pair escaped in the mother’s 2007 Ford Focus.”

Police spokeswoman Elizabeth Watts said a motive was “probably just typical teenage angst.”

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